China's Focus Media (FMCN) is taking advantage of the low media exposure during this week's Lunar New Year holiday to announce a number of executive changes at the company that become effective immediately.
Jason Jiang, Focus Media's executive chairman, will resume his position as chief executive officer to replace Dr. Tan Zhi, who will continue with the company as an executive director. Alex Deyi Yang will now become the acting chief financial officer as he replaces Daniel Wu, who intends to leave the company weeks after Focus Media announced plans to sell most of its assets to Chinese Web portal Sina.com.
Prior to joining Focus Media in August 2004, Yang was general counsel of Linktone, a revenue-deficient Chinese wireless value-added services company, from October 2002 until June 2004.
Focus Media also announced the appointment of Michael Xu as vice president of finance. Xu joined Focus Media in October 2008. Prior to joining Focus Media, Xu was chief financial officer of China EDU from 2007 to 2008. From 2004 through 2007, he was vice president of finance at Alibaba Group, prior to which he worked as an auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Beijing.